True Solo Campaign Breaker

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
Just a Solid Dark Horse Deck (Beginners' Guide) 49 36 4 1.0
Inspiration for
None yet

lelel555 · 2585

pic4858577.jpg

This is the most insane deck I've played in True Solo Campaigns. I have done EotE and Circle Undone, NotZ with constant god-like feeling (except bonfires). I cleared each and every location in City of Elder Things (v1) about 6 doom before the end of Agenda 2. I literally felt like cheating. Moreover, my friends also tested this deck independently with similar outcomes.

Deck thinning is a deck spinning

This deck is not for beginners, I would say, so I don't describe each and every card. Instead, I give you the rough description of concepts used. But if you think you are a beginner and still want to try, then sure, go for it :)

Main Idea

The concept of this deck is to:

You basically pass every test.

Mulligan:

Ideal hand consists of 5 of those 6 cards:

  • Fieldwork
  • Madame Labranche
  • Fire Axe
  • Plucky
  • Drawing Thin

These are the crucial assets. Unfortunately, this deck is very asset heavy. Dark Horse in this deck shouldn't (usually) be played before turn 3.

Soak

Since one of the most important cards is Plucky, we need to protect it from damage. I played this deck with Leather Coat / Leather Coat which is here a lesser card comparing to Improvised Shield. Duke also is very good soak, because it is always from turn 1. Soak is also important because of Wracked by Nightmares. This is a brutal weakness. And it always comes at the worst possible moment. I don't know how it is possible.

Piloting the deck

This deck is very specific to play. Your typical turn consists of at least one Duke investigation ability with moving. This is crucial, because it is better to use Duke to move twice along two turns than twice in the same turn. That it is how you gain tempo and advantage of the game and mitigate all of the cost you played at the beginning setting up that all heavy rig.

Typical turn at the beginning of the game:

  1. Play an Asset
  2. Play an Asset
  3. Move and investigate

Typical turn later in game:

  1. Move and Investigate
    (ready Duke)
  2. Move and Investigate
  3. Play an asset

OR, if you have an enemy somewhere (usually at yout location (B) or at the connecting location (A)) :

1A. Move and Investigate
1B. Fight with Axe
3. Play an asset.

Don't use Madame Labranche too early. Wait as long as you can. If you haven't needed her generosity this turn, gain a resource in the window just before upkeep. And Always gain a resource in upkeep - you can always dump it on Plucky or Scrapper.

Restart to level 0 deck:

Ideas for 'whatever': Live and Learn, Survival Instinct, Keep Faith, Unexpected Courage, Stunning Blow, Reckless Assault, Rise to the Occasion. Literally anything you might find useful. Worst case it is still better than a blank card. And a blank card is still valuable, since you can discard it to ready Duke!

Priority of upgrading:

I would say that Plucky and Drawing Thin are the most priority upgrades. Then, upgrade everything you can (by name).

Once you get to those 26xp (19 without taboo) there is really hardly anything to upgrade for. I don't know, buy Observed, Déjà Vu (I know it does almost nothing in this deck, but hey, you won't need any more experience, really), second copy of Scrapper... xD

Maybe you want to try Enchanted Bow, but I did not test that particular card here.

Final Thoughts

I played this deck heavily. At least 28 scenarios so far (including eote+tcu). After EotE I did not change it very much, when I played TCU. In both cases I banked around 10+-ish experience, because literally every other card was decreasing the draw and/or functionality. Btw, do not cut out the coreset neutral skills. Just don't. Please. They replace itself and in this deck it is all about draw.

14 comments

Sep 30, 2022 PetrasN · 1

Thanks for the deck!

It feels like cheating, because - "Since one of the most important cards is Plucky, we need to protect it from damage." You can't protect it. Its card text says "Non-direct damage/horror must be assigned to Plucky before it can be assigned to your investigator card." - which you seem to interpret as "any damage that would be dealt to investigator should ...", and that you can soak it to Leather coat or Duke. Instead, see rules about direct damage (https://arkhamdb.com/rules#Direct_Damage_Direct_Horror) - which means that whenever you have ANY CHOICE where to assign damage, it should be put on plucky as first priority. That's why that card is so powerful in its effect - because you can't protect it with soak. Damage prevention still works (cards like "I've had worse..." where effect says "cancel damage"). Hope that helps! :)

Sep 30, 2022 milo17 · 8

You CAN protect it with leather coat from NON-direct damage, which is most of the damage that you get. Direct damage is pretty rare honestly. I don't understand what you mean @PetrasN? Do you think that if a ghoul attacks you for 1 dmg and you have Plucky on the board then Plucky has to tank? Because I'm pretty sure that is not the case.

Sep 30, 2022 PetrasN · 1

Oh my, on much more careful reading, it seems that in fact I am the one who is in the wrong here. My great apologies, it seems that I was playing this card wrong :/

Sep 30, 2022 PetrasN · 1

I wish there was a way to delete a comment now :D

Sep 30, 2022 ThunderJ16 · 1

To be fair to PetrasN, I interpreted playing Plucky the exact same way the first time I tried using it too :P

Oct 08, 2022 jarrodprice · 1

When you start a new campaign with this or any other investigator, do you reset the deck to level zero cards?

Oct 09, 2022 lelel555 · 2585

@jarrodprice yes, I do start from scratch each and every time I start a new campaign.

@ThunderJ16 and @PetrasN yes, that might be confusing. Glad somebody asked, because maybe somebody accidentally reads this comment section and does not know all the rules. I also had similar mindset with Key of Ys. ;)

Oct 13, 2022 Heroes.84 · 31

@lelel555 Hi nice deck but i have some other ideas for you:

  • [Inspiring Presence](Inspiring Presencehttps://arkhamdb.com/card/03228) so good for Pete and specially for Duke
  • Ice Pick(3) so much better than Fire Axe has 1 xp version
  • consider Peter Sylvestre to better with soak for Plucky

Oct 14, 2022 lelel555 · 2585

@Heroes.84 thank you for suggestions. Luckily, I've played with all of those cards in similar decks (example). And:

  • Inspiring Presence takes up the precious off-class slots and I am convinced that Lucky Cigarette Case or Vicious Blow are much better by any means. No contest.
  • Ice Pick - Interesting one. I'd say this card is awesome. But I would NOT cut Fire Axe. Madame Labranche, Drawing Thin and resource from the upkeep phase is enough to get Fire Axe going also much better than Ice pick. I like my stats to be big, like 7-ish, which the combo there provides. If you want to use Ice pick, then I guess either you attack with 3 with your Pete combat score or you use Duke. In the latter case it means you exhaust Duke with is the last possible choice you should make in this deck. Duke shouldn't be used for fighting unless necessary. You fight with 4 (or 5 with Dark Horse), which is an awful statline to begin with. You almost can't deal with enemies like that. And how do you want to recover Ice Picks from the discard pile? How do you want to achieve consistency in your fighting? No, I think cutting Fire Axe off is a terrible idea for this deck.
  • Peter Sylvestre but we hardly need horror protection for Plucky. Plucky can stand horror by itself. It is damage that we need to protect it from. So Jessica Hyde would be an option, true. And she also gives us + which is also useful. But I think Madame Labranche, if managed properly, is a powerhouse in a Dark Horse deck. If you don't need her during the round, you can always tap her in the last possible moment and start a new round with 2 resources, which clearly makes an advantage with Plucky and Scrapper, or you can just play an asset like Fieldwork.

This deck isn't that easy to pilot, true, but if piloted properly, it is a powerhouse indeed. I have no doubt of it at all. So I'd say maybe either you had some terrible luck, or you haven't played it at all (just read), or you want to play a different Ashcan deck. If the last case, that's fine :)
So, all in all, I have put those cards in this deck with a ton of deliberation. Fire Axe, Madame, DH, Fieldwork, LCC, Vicious blow are quite key in this deck and cutting it off will either result in making a completely different deck or would make this deck worse. ;)

Nov 13, 2022 drassain · 1

Hi,

This deck is very funny. Do you know any changes with cards of Scarket Keys to improve this deck?

Regards

Nov 20, 2022 lelel555 · 2585

@drassain, I was thinking about it, but instead of Improvised Shield, nothing special. Maybe except Gumption which is really cool. And let's you investigate a shroud≤2 location or hit a Whipperwirl with ease.

Jan 07, 2023 lok1686 · 8

It work on EXPERT?

Dec 07, 2023 SadChara · 1

Minor spoiler for early Path to Carcossa

Just finished Solo Carcossa Standard with it, with meta knowledge. Overall, once it had plucky, drawing thin, and scrapper, it did extremely well. Thank you so much for this! Once everything is online, being able to do every tests at +5, while having the usual survivors shenanigans feels so satisfying.

Sanity was very hard to manage in the first scenario and I had to switch from Return to the regular version because of it. Once I had plucky to tank some, it got much better.

Fine clothes did a lot of work in scenario one and two, to deal with Poltergeist and then the party guests.

I found myself never committing the Manual Dexterity, so if I only wanted to use them to cycle, I'd probably would put guts instead. Of course, is our weakest stat if we can use Duke for and so maybe it's my fault for never evading.

Dec 07, 2023 lelel555 · 2585

@SadChara - thanks for the insight! I'm happy that you like the deck! :) Indeed, Manual Dexterity isn't very usefull in PTC, but it is useful in campaigns like EotE, TIC, TCU and for evading enemies, because sometimes you can go really fast with clues ignoring the damage to be dealt. :)